Panthers and taxes: tools of landgrabbers
By Henry Lamb
web posted January 12, 2004
The goals of the Wildlands Project are to convert "at least" half
of the U.S. land area to wilderness, to manage "most" of the rest
of the land for "conservation objectives," and to force people to
live inside urban boundaries in what's euphemistically called
"sustainable communities."
Although this bizarre plan has never been debated or adopted by
Congress, it is being implemented in dozens of ways by
governments at every level, through a variety of feel-good
programs, all working toward the Wildlands Project goals.
Two of these programs are especially sinister: reintroduction of
the "Florida panther," and taxing Tennessee air.
According to Jan Michael Jacobson, a Florida scientist who
specializes in Everglades ecology, there is no such thing as a
"Florida" panther. The cats being reintroduced into the
Everglades were catnapped from Texas, where they are
considered vermin and legally shot as pests. When the Fish and
Wildlife Service brings them across the Florida border, they are
dubbed "Florida" panther, and declared to be an endangered or
threatened species entitled to legal protection.
Jacobson says these cats are known to prefer children in the
five-to-nine-year-old range, but will eat pets, that are much
easier to catch than wild prey. This fact must have guided the
government agencies that deposited the panthers at the edge of
the Everglades, between two campgrounds, one of which is
designed for elementary school children.
The panthers are protected; the people are not. The people can
be jailed, or fined for interfering with the panthers – or the
people can leave the area. Promoters of the Wildlands Project
believe that people have no business in the Everglades in the first
place, and should be forced into the sustainable communities
being prepared in Collier and Dade Counties.
In Tennessee, the scheme is even more sinister.
There was a time when government understood that "public" land
was for use by the public. There have always been programs
through which the government issued permits for individuals and
corporations to use public land. The Wildlands Project is
transforming "public" land to government land.
Over the years, about 65 families secured permits from the
federal government to use small parcels of land inside the
Cherokee National Forest in Polk County, Tennessee, to build
summer cabins for recreation. Each family paid a fee for the
permit, which had to be renewed every ten years. The price of
the permit is set at five-percent of the appraised value of the
cabin, one-fourth of which goes to the county. The county also
receives Payment in Lieu of Taxes for every acre of federal land
in the county, and state law prohibits direct taxation of federal
land.
Polk County tax assessor Randy Yates, has come up with a
brilliant scheme: a cabin that was appraised at $56,400 in 2003,
for the first time in 50 years, had $164,000 added to the
valuation for something called "leasehold." The total tax bill is
now based on $220,400 valuation. This means that the permit
fee can increase to $11,000, instead of the $2,800 produced by
the former valuation.
What better way to drive people off "public" land?
When Yates first announced this scheme, the cabin owners, also
referred to as "inholders," protested that their permits in no way
constituted a taxable lease, since the permits have zero value,
cannot be transferred, and if the permits are not renewed, the
cabins must be destroyed or moved. Since none of the members
of the local board of equalization owned a cabin in the National
Forest, the board was indifferent to the cabin owners' appeals.
In late December, a state Administrative Judge ruled that the
leasehold scheme would stand. Cabin owners must pay tax on
$164,000 of value they do not own, which exists only in the
minds of government officials who declare it.
There are thousands of people who hold permits of various
kinds, to use "public" land all across the country. If this new
taxation scheme is allowed to stand, many, if not most, of these
permit holders will be forced to abandon their use of "public"
land. This single devious scheme may be more effective at
forcing people off "public" land, than panthers in Florida, wolves
in Pennsylvania, or all the endangered species in the West.
This Wildlands Project mentality polluted the Clinton/Gore
administration, and land management agencies became the
dumping ground for environmental extremists. No hazardous
waste site should be assigned a higher priority for clean up, than
the agencies of government still infested with people who believe
the land should be owned and controlled by government.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty
International.
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